Trademark infringement is a huge issue in the sneaker industry. Just look at Lil Nas X and MSCHF; they did the Satan Shoes, where they took a Nike Air Max 97, injected human blood in the sole, and put devil imagery all over the sneakers. Nike sued for many different causes of action, trademark infringement being one of them. Trademark infringement is not something to take lightly. Remember this as you continue your online sneaker education.

Converse filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission against 31 different companies over trademark infringement on the Chuck Taylor sneakers. Adidas sued Skechers and actually won the case for trademark infringement on their Stan Smith. Warren Lotas was sued by Nike for his version of the Pigeon Dunk. The list goes on and on and on. You’ll see no shortage of these kinds of issues in your sneaker education.

In order to prove trademark infringement, you have to demonstrate two things. First, you must prove that you have a valid and protectable trademark. Next, you have to demonstrate that there’s a likelihood of consumer confusion; that the consumer will likely be confused as to the nature or origin of the product or services. In order to prove a likelihood of confusion, courts look at the Polaroid Factors, which is a long list of factors that they weigh against in order to determine whether or not there is a likelihood of confusion as to who actually owns the product or service.

The role of an editor has changed over time. An editor for print magazines had to worry about the articles that were being printed, where the advertisements would be placed, and how the photos would be represented. They had to be meticulous about every single apostrophe or period because it’s in print, it’s on paper, and it’s there forever.

Online Sneaker Education in the Digital Age

Now with the digital age, it’s really changed. Instead of managing just one publication, you’re managing an entire brand and every sort of platform that your brand touches. It could be a print magazine, and it could also be how the Facebook page is curated. How the photos that go up on the Instagram feed. How things are copy-edited on Twitter. And where the logos are placed on your videos.

Sneaker Education in Brand Management

You have to be more multifaceted now. You still need to know how to put a sentence together because that’s the building block of everything else. When you are working with a brand of sneakers in this digital age you’re not just managing one thing. You have to think about it as an entire brand, especially if you’re running a media site.

The internet has had a profound effect on all our lives, influencing everything from the way we watch television, to shopping to the products we purchase. The internet has greatly affected “sneaker culture” in that prior to widespread use of the web, popularity of sneakers and sales were often regional. At one time, one must either live in a certain area or know someone in that community in order to get certain styles of sneakers. Today, the internet allows us to choose our sneakers with the mere click of a button.

The internet provides information on release dates of limited-edition sneakers as well as those produced and sold solely in certain regions. Now, a person can simply hop on the internet in order to purchase that limited-edition sneaker or those that were relegated to a distant region just two decades ago. E-commerce has broken barriers that once were virtually impossible for most consumers to cross. Plus, the internet provides sneaker release dates so no one has to be left out of the sneaker industry’s latest offerings.

However, the internet is contributing to another phenomenon unheard of prior to the internet – reselling. Reselling of sneakers is at an all-time high, which has both good points and bad. Retailers have difficulty in that if they get a limited number of Yeezys, millions of shoppers may flood the organization’s website, crashing it.

The internet has created a raffle of sorts where consumers are searching for certain brands and styles of sneakers. Even parents are getting in on the selling aspect of retail; many will order that coveted pair of shoes at the retailer’s price (usually around $150). Then, they put the sought-after shoes on the internet where those who weren’t lucky enough to get those shoes from a retailer will pay $800 or more for the latest styles. It’s a win for the retailer who makes their initial profit, but the internet seller on eBay or other resale sites banks a huge profit, too.

However, the “purists” on the internet see this resale opportunity as a bad thing. At the same time, those with careers in retail might not have their jobs without the internet as it operates today.

Social media is also a driving force in both the initial sale and resale of sneakers. Online sneaker education chiefly comes from social media as well as sites that post reviews on upcoming popular models of shoes. Some look at the online sneaker sale movement as somewhat a “cult” thing; however, a company’s social media presence is definitely having a positive effect on sales.

In the 1990s, most of the attention a sneaker received was due to an athlete’s wearing a certain brand or style of sneaker. Maybe consumers would see the shoe on television; however, prior to the great improvements in high-definition television, it might be impossible for consumers to see an athlete’s kicks. Perhaps a photoshoot in the latest edition of “Sports Illustrated” would show that same cool shoe; however, consumers were on their own finding the exact brand and style of shoe.

Social media sites such as Instagram post photos of athletes in high resolution, and consumers can definitively see what their favorite athlete is wearing. Plus, one can quickly go to their preferred web browser to find the shoe and all available online shops. Even with limited-edition offerings, such as Nike’s LeBron James sneakers, consumers are still clamoring to get their hands on a coveted pair. A great example of this is Super Bowl LII, when Justin Timberlake wore a highly sought-after shoe. Those who have certain apps on their phones are alerted that the celeb is live wearing a limited-edition pair of shoes. By the next commercial break, most of those limited-edition shoes – made in a certain quantity, by the way – are gone.

Perhaps shoe enthusiasts should be more concerned with the amount of shoes being produced. Consider the Virgil Abloh Ten Nike – only a certain number of people will get this shoe during the initial drop. Some consumers report only getting error messages when trying to order. A larger number of shoes produced would help prevent this, but manufacturers have little desire to do so. Perhaps retailers should look at ensuring this won’t happen due to their website crashing.

Maybe consumers should be satisfied with the “halo effect” of shoe drops. If a consumer fails to get the coveted Yeezy 350 on its initial drop, then maybe the purchaser should consider the Alphabounce or the Ultra Boost. Regardless, consumers will need to move quickly to get any of the higher end sneakers desired by many in the public.

Perhaps consumers may need to consider looking for a product that is not the hot item at the moment. Few sneaker releases sell out almost immediately, unless the product is one of the highly coveted styles. Unless consumers must absolutely have that exact style, buyers will have to then scour the resale market where some of these shoes sell for up to $1,500. If money is no object, then it’s great to wait on the resale. However, those on a budget will have to find other ways to get that coveted shoe.

Sneaker education tells us that eventually, everything – no matter how popular – goes on sale. This includes those limited-edition sneakers. Consumers should perhaps worry not about what LeBron’s next shoe will look like, but on how they can still procure a recently released and still popular shoe at a much lower price.

Sometimes it pays to look back on previous releases instead of the latest, newest releases. Consider the Air Jordan, after 20 years plus of production, a shoe still as popular as it was upon initial release.

Back in the day, people chose their kicks based on what was popular in their location – on the street, down the block – today, people are looking to the latest sporting event and what a favorite celeb is wearing rather than one’s closest friends. Jordan chose to capitalize on Timberlake’s popularity and his appearance on the Super Bowl’s halftime show. It’s a decision that turned out to be highly profitable for the company.

Procuring our favorite sneakers today is no easy task, but we consumers have more avenues today than our predecessors just two decades ago. Download those apps and set your notifications to be able to get those coveted kicks at the best price possible.

There are a bunch of different things that we do from a content standpoint. When you’re talking content, there’s a type of very elevated, longer or shorter long-form video that you can do that might end up on YouTube. There are live broadcasts that you could publish out through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other similar service.

Most of the time, people want to have a better look at product. So, sometimes, it takes the form of an unboxing video where you’re showing someone a shoe that might be coming out next week. It might have come out last week. It’s pretty time-sensitive. Again, it comes back to being human, taking people through the product, giving people a little bit more information than they would get through other channels.

This has an influence in the sneaker world that changed how it used to be. In the ’90s, it was pro athletes doing the influencing. Just take a look at like Michael Jordan back in the day. Everyone always cared about what he was wearing on the court. Then, it used to be something like rap album covers. Those would influence people as well.

But now in the digital age, it’s kind of changed. Anybody can really have any influence on someone. It could be a 16-year-old kid in Dubai who just wants to start his own clothing brand, and he has millions of followers. Or it can be a writer, for example, like Russ or Joe who have seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of things within their industry. People want to see what they’re wearing. They know that what they’re wearing is what’s hot right now.

The spectrum is really widened from just entertainers and athletes. Through social media, anybody can have an influence on someone. This is especially important when it comes to sneaker education.

For today’s crop of sneaker influencers, there’s a kind of a fascination with younger kids who have a lot of money. It’s like the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Growing up, a lot of people always wanted to be rich. As a kid, not maybe as an adult, but in their youth, they wish they had had unlimited money. Younger kids are a little more forthcoming with their needs and desires.

So, you see these kids spending their money on things that an adult, who has the same amount of money, normally wouldn’t spend their money on, whether it’s Benjamin Kicks taking his Mercedes truck and making it look like a Virgil Air Jordan 1 or Money Kicks taking his father’s Ferrari and wrapping it to look like Supreme x Louis Vuitton.

It’s almost like a voyeuristic element to see what the lives of these über-rich, young, sneaker-head kids are really like. We’re never going to live that lifestyle, so we want to see what it’s really like.

The key to any industry, not just social media, is consistency. That’s an important lesson in your online sneaker education. The sneaker media personalities have become big names because they’ve remained consistent in who they are, whether it’s an act for the camera or not. They continually update and live this life as a certain persona. So, it becomes real even if that’s not who they were at first. They’ve made the world believe that that’s who they are, and that’s who they’ve created their social media personality behind.

Just being charismatic is another thing that really helps these people stick out. Sneaker YouTube and social media as a whole kind of has the flair for being overdramatic and doing stuff over the top. So, these guys have done over-the-top things on their social media accounts, which is going to get more attention than people who just keep it really simple. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be yourself. But any big YouTuber right now who has a huge following is typically doing ridiculous things.

A hypebeast is someone who tailors their purchasing habits around perceived hype or the perceived resale value. In sneaker culture, it’s typically associated with people who may want a very limited sneaker collaboration, or they may want a pair of Kanye West sneakers. Maybe they want a Babe hoodie or a Supreme T-shirt just because they know that a lot of other people want them.

Liking those items in their own is not bad, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed to like a pair of GCs or a Supreme hoodie just because it’s trendy. But hypebeasts are generally associated with teenage boys who are dressing based on internet trends and want to show the world they have all the cool stuff without really developing their own unique personal style yet. They kind of just throw it all together, and it can look very awkward because they’re generally awkward at that age as well.

In summary, that’s what a hypebeast signifies. It’s just someone who’s chasing the most sought-after items without any sort of rhyme or reason other than the fact that other people think they look cool.

There are a lot of ingredients that go into making a viral piece of content. Obviously, there are the technical aspects with how many shares, how many comments it gets, and the SEO value of the headline that you put in. Those are big factors.

Another factor is, say it’s an interview, being brave enough to ask the right question that is going to get the right answer. One example that comes to mind is the sneaker shopping episode with Bella Hadid. Through that interview, there was a real viral moment where Joe asked her what sneakers a guy must be wearing to approach her.

“If homeboy is coming through with these, it quiet. Yeah, no, it’s quiet for him. But, like, if he comes through in these, you’ve got some Air Maxes out here, you’ve got some Jordans, homeboy’s going to, like, get it,” says Hadid.

One of these viral moments that really comes to mind is DJ Khaled on “Complex Closets.” Khaled’s famous line, “Congratulations, you played yourself,” became one of his catchphrases, and that was the first time you heard it, and it was memed. It was GIFed all over the internet.

It’s a combination of all of those things – just knowing the back-end part of it and knowing the right keywords and the right tags, and you also have to know the right SEO headline. Just having the right subject, being brave enough to ask the right questions, and getting that right content is what really makes something go viral.

One of the most important things to remember for social media is that you have to give somebody something and help somebody in some way. A lot of people approach this in sneaker media and in other media basically about conversions, about how they want to use a tweet to get a click or use a tweet to sell a pair of sneakers and make a little bit of money off that. That’s good sneaker education, right there.

But you’ll find that it’s not really about that. You have to think first and foremost about how you’re helping your audience. What are you giving them? Are you giving them a piece of information? Are you giving them a cool shoe? Are you giving them a meme that they might find interesting? Are you giving them an opinion on something that they may not have heard before that may help color their decisions?

You have to actually give them something of value. You can’t just think about the numbers. We get lost in that a lot because we have to make numbers, but you have to consider what your audience wants and what you can actually give to them to create a bond. That only furthers the trust you have with the people who follow you, with the people who read the things you write or consume the videos you watch, so remember all of these as you continue your online sneaker education.

What makes a social media campaign or a regular media campaign really work is authenticity. That’s always going to be what matters. You could really be someone. You could be someone with 500,000 followers, and if all you want to do is get paid by companies to post things, people are going to catch on to that and realize that you’ll just post anything provided you get the right amount of zeros at the end of the check.

Eventually, your following is going to trail off, and people aren’t going to trust you. You need to build up an identity first if you’re a person working on your own thing and be true to that and recognize that as much as your identity as you share people are building up their own identity for you or getting a feel for what you’re into and what you’re not into.

That’s not to say that you can’t evolve or you can’t change, but if you’re kind of all over the map or if you’re only posting whatever the newest stuff is no matter what it is, eventually people are going to realize they can probably get that from somewhere else. The only thing you really have is yourself.

If you’re a brand, it’s sort of the same way. If you’re pushing something as the latest and greatest, and two months later, you’re pushing something else as the latest and greatest and have completely abandoned whatever came before it, people are going to remember that. And eventually, they’re going to start questioning whether this new great thing is really that great at all or whether they even need to pay attention to it because a month from now there’ll be something else.

So that’s the important thing–remembering that other people are going to remember this stuff too. You can’t just throw random stuff into the void and assume it’s going to go away because it’s not.

A Grail sneaker in the sneaker industry refers to that one sneaker that you would basically give up all of your other sneakers for. It is the crown jewel of your collection. Whether you have it or you don’t have it, it is that one piece that defines you as a sneaker collector and defines your collection.

Back in the day you would have to go through a lot of things to acquire your Grail. That could mean reaching out to someone overseas, searching in basements, or really wild things you probably wouldn’t have to do anymore. People would do it, though, because that one piece would define your collection and would define you as a collector. It’s the same as an art collector going after a rare or interesting piece of art. A Grail should mean something to you.

“Grail” is very loosely used nowadays in sneaker education or online sneaker education, but when it’s in its purest form, the stories mattered because that was a sneaker that you would go through great lengths to acquire. Nowadays, that’s made it a little easier because if you have enough money, you can get it.

The Olympics have always been a big opportunity for not only sneaker companies and the sneaker industry, but also for fans of sneakers or sneaker fanatics. You always see a lot of new things in the Olympics. This has been true back as far as the ’30s. One example of Olympic branding opportunities was when Jesse Owens wore Dassler Brother track spikes when he won multiple golds in Nazi Germany. If you look at a lot of Adidas’ classic trainers, you could call them all-purpose trainers, you’d have stuff like the Rome and the Montreal, or the SL72. A lot of those classic trainers are named after either cities where the Olympics were held in. Companies have also used the year the Olympics occurred, in the case of the SL72. Adidas dominated that market for a long time, if for the only reason that they had sort of that grasp on the European market and on doing all-purpose trainers. Nike didn’t exist as Nike until 1972. In starting Nike, Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight got runners wearing the shoes. Steve Prefontaine was a big example. He was an Olympic runner from Oregon. He Died tragically in a car accident when he was in his early 20s. He didn’t even get a chance to run in what would have been hopefully his redemption Olympics. He’s the person on whom Nike based a lot of the ideals of their running business, where he would come out so strong and want to just run everybody into the ground. He would not be able to carry through the line, even though his records did stand for a very, very long time. I believe some of them still do. Later on, if you want to jump ahead, you would get Michael Johnson in 1996 running in gold spikes. That was a big historical event in sneaker education. The gold shoes. There was just something so prideful about that. I was in college at the time having our athlete kick butt on the world stage in our country wearing gold shoes. Nothing said “America” more than that in my mind- his swagger, his dominance, and those shoes were just kind of a perfect combination for saying, “Welcome to the United States, we’re here to kick your butt in track, and we’re going to have the world’s best athletes in the world’s best footwear.” That’s what I really remember distinctly when it comes to shoes in Olympic games. The Olympics is a very important platform for sneaker brands to show off their latest technology. Nike, in particular, always takes advantage of this stage. In 2008, they brought out their lunar cushioning foam. That went on to be an important piece of sneaker technology for the brand for years to come so remember that as you continue your online sneaker education. In 2012, at the Olympics, Nike used that platform to roll out Flyknit, which of course is now a billion-dollar franchise. Nike is the brand that most takes advantage of the Olympics, but of course, everyone wants to be part of this gigantic global sporting moment. I think the amount to which brands want to put their logos on athletes for these types of moments, like the Olympics, shows just how incredibly important it is for them. This is true whether the logo is on the athletes when they walk in or when they’re on the medal stand. There’s a famous story from the 1992 dream team. Michael Jordan didn’t want to show the Reebok logo on his Team USA jacket, so he put the jacket over his shoulder or obscured the logo. This was because he was a Nike athlete, because he is such a huge Nike guy. Nike had paid him so much money up to that point and continues to make him billions of dollars. There was no way he was going to show off a Reebok logo. So if you look at the images from that event from that medal stand, a couple of the Nike guys are very carefully obscuring the logos on their Reebok jackets. You had much of the dream team in ’92 wearing Nikes. It was Michael Jordan in his 7s with the number 9 on the back, Scottie Pippen in the Air Flight Lite, and then even Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and John Stockton all in different Nike inline models done up specifically for the ’92 Olympics. I remember seeing them in stores, and again, that was like innovation, an event marked in a specific time. Unfortunately, with an event, if you bought it right then, you were of the moment. It was perfect, but just for those moments. Six months from then, it didn’t really matter how cool the shoe was. The event was over. In those days, especially in the early ’90s, before retro really became a big thing, it was more important to be in the moment and have whatever the cool shoe was right then. If you are wearing Air Jordan 1s in 1990, that wasn’t necessarily cool. That was sort of saying you’re behind. What are you waiting for? So the Olympics would always mark something and establish it as the new thing, whether it was the Lunar Racer, or the first Hyper Dunk, or the Flyknit Trainer and the Flyknit Racer. It was an opportunity to look at Nike. Adidas did the “made in Germany” Prime Knit for the Olympics, and you know those are very, very hard to find, but the Olympics is still that showcase for new technology and new shoes.

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Gary Warnett, who had his own blog, GWARIZM, passed away last year. He also wrote for sites like Complex, and Crooked Tongues, a forum that went into retail. He wrote for a bunch of brands and was probably the most notable sneaker writer of all time. In the early 2000s, sites like Hype Beast and Highs Nobiliety came up. Sneaker News and Complex really tapped into sneaker media. They started off really bare bones but they’ve become a lot more robust over the years, and now you have a lot of sites getting into sneaker coverage.

Sneaker Education in Media

GQ, the Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated are all covering sneakers now. Speaking of Sports Illustrated, they had a revolutionary article published, I believe, in 1990, called “Your Sneakers are Your Life.” It detailed a story in Chicago about a kid getting murdered over a pair of Air Jordans sneakers, and on the cover is a pair of Air Jordan 5s with a bookbag and a gun on them. That moment has always led sneaker journalism, especially from a very mainstream response.

A colleague of mine, Rich, started Kicks in the City, which has been around forever. Rich is a super important dude in the world of sneaker media. He did it all by himself for many years and really killed it. People don’t necessarily give Kicks in the City the credit it deserves, but it was one of the first, if not the first, sneaker blogs. For whatever reason, some other sites did a better job expanding their brand, but Rich was there first.

A little bit after, there was Kicksology. Professor K back in the day. These things all came from the forums. After that, it became commercialized a little bit to where people realized, hey, we can tell these stories and turn it into a business, rather than just a community. Now the game is overrun, and you have a million websites, a million Instagram accounts, a million Twitter accounts that serve this information.

Sneaker Media Evolution for Students in Online Sneaker Education

Back then, it was totally different. You didn’t have as many sources. You didn’t have as many shops taking photos of their sneakers and posting them online. I wasn’t working in sneaker media during that early era, but just looking back on it and seeing the kind of content people were creating, you can tell how different it is. How much they still had to learn. I mean, those things are important, but we’re really on a different level now as far as what we’re thinking about or what we can accomplish or basically how seriously the brands take us.

Sole Collector Magazine highlighted the sneaker industry in a way nothing had before. It was a quarterly print magazine just dedicated to sneakers that started in the early 2000s. It profiled actual collectors, and you could read about other people who had the same passion as you did.

It’s a website now that highlights new sneaker releases, reviews shoes, and features interviews with people who influence sneaker culture.

Another moment that I feel moved sneaker media forward was Kicks On Court and Celeb Kicks that happened through Nice Kicks, a website all about sneakers. Those became places you could get your internet dose of what players were wearing in the NBA, and what your favorite rapper or entertainer was wearing through paparazzi photos.

Another key moment was probably the show Sneaker Shopping. There was really nothing like that that had existed before. It was the zenith of where we are now with sneaker culture. It started in 2014 and is in its tenth season now.

The show features celebrities who are identifying themselves as sneaker-heads and athletes or entertainers that are identifying themselves as sneaker-heads. You get to see what clothes and sneakers they’re into because you’re actually going on a shopping experience with them.

Another major media moment for sneakers came when Vine was the big thing. Remember the meme about shoes that went: “Officer, I got one question for you. What are those?”

Usually, internet memes come and go. They’re hot for a week and then gone, but that shoe meme felt like it lasted for months. It spawned sneaker podcasts that were named after it. People used the audio from it in their Vines and their posts on Snapchat or Instagram.

Sneaker education has changed along with the media, too. Online sneaker education has replaced a lot of in-person classes and internships.

The media highlights how similar the sneaker industry is now to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago. The media covering the sneaker industry has changed, but what people are looking for and want to be a part of is still the same.

One example is the collector profiles in Sole Collector Magazine. You would open those pages up and read about other collectors who had this same passion for Air Jordans as you did.

Now, instead of looking at a paper magazine, you’re connecting with these people through Facebook in an Air Jordan Facebook group or through the curated people that you follow on Twitter or Instagram.

There are new ways to consume media today, but I think the core tenants of it and why people consume it are still the same.